Portal, glad to hear you're taking a class on the cold war. I assume you're processing a lot of new information right now. The tricky thing about the Soviet Union is that it existed for seven decades, and went througfh wholly different shades of development. Thus, things that were patently true at one point in time about the Soviet Union, were patently untrue at another point. Hence probably some of the confusion that emerges from your post. Just for starters:
Portal Star wrote:No, most Soviet citizens weren't even aware they were soviets.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. The Soviet Union was made through fire and blood, so to say: the civil war which the "Reds" fought against the "Whites" and the "Greens" lasted four years and raged through most of the land. Millions died through violence or starvation. I doubt very much anyone was
not aware that they were in the Soviet Union now once all that was over.
Portal Star wrote:Russia was filled with peasants with little-to no education and the impact the revolution had was mainly on the cities.
This is only (and only partially) true if you talk about the very first decade or so, the 1920s.
In the 1930s, Stalin executed a violent land collectivisation campaign, that forced all the peasants into collective farms. Again, millions died in the process. By that time, the Sovietisation had definitely impact on the countryside, too.
Stalin also forced through a huge industrialisation drive in the 30s and after WW2. Russia was no country of peasants anymore come the mid-fifties. By the 70s, the Soviet Union was the world's leading producer of steel, pig iron, coal and oil; over half of the Soviet citizens worked in industry and only about a quarter in agriculture; and over 60% lived in cities. (I didnt wanna do this by heart so I grabbed some numbers from Palmer and Colton's
History of the Modern World and Smith's
Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union).
Mass urbanisation and industrialisation also came with mass education. By 1970, children had ten years of compulsory education. Course, any of the "gamma" subjects were more indoctrination than education, but the Soviets did pretty good in the beta subjects, as well as in technical vocational education. Lots of engineers. According to
the Library of Congress, some 5 million students were enrolled in post-high school "institutions of higher learning" in 1987, of which over half a million in university.
In short, in the SU's later decades, Russia was definitely not "filled with peasants with little-to no education".
Portal Star wrote:I am pretty sure my teacher said that everyone got the same wages, regardless of training. Is this not true?
No, not true. For one, the Party elite earned more ;-).
What is true, of course, is that income differentiation was pittance compared to that of current-day America. But there were differences, for sure, all kinds. Walter mentioned an example already and by ways of another example, in the 70s and 80s many moved up to the Arctic zone to work there for few-year stints because wages were much better.
One thing you'd have to keep in mind is that the differences may have been along opposite lines than what you're used to. I don't know by heart about the Soviet Union, but miners were well paid in many communist countries for example, better than teachers or even university lecturers, say.
Also, even though income disparaty was real enough, but marginal compared to what it was here, the elite would benefit economically from all kinds of other perks: free dachas, access to stores with goods others would never be able to obtain, etc.
Portal Star wrote:The soviets putting a man into space was for war purposes - in the cultural fight to prove superiority in the united states.
True, dat. But that does not change the fact that they did it - ahead of the US - which is what fbaezer pointed out when you wrote here that the Soviet Union "didn't provide any avenue for invention or entrepeneurship, and thus had to be dependent on America for importation of new technologies."
Fersure, investment into such scientific/military feats went at the cost of not being able to furnish the population with proper living standards. (Though with Soviet living standards, too, one should never talk about 1970 and 1930 as if its anything like the same thing.)
Portal Star wrote:Later on in the cold war they had to make a variety of pacts with the US in exchange for new technologies (ex: molotov - Ribbentrop pact, which was never carried out).
<smiles> Errm ... I think you'd better check up on that Molotov-Ribbentropp pact thing (hint: it was a pact with Nazi Germany, not the US).
Portal Star wrote:They wouldn't allow technological progress because of the threat freedom of information posed to their totalitarian government.
One can put it the other way round and say that it was thanks to fostering technological progress that the Soviet Union was long able to maintain its totalitarian government. Rockets and tanks, listening devices and heavy industry: they all required technological progress.
You would have a better point if you pointed out that the kind of centralist drive for technological progress that the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex tended to invest in was ill-suited for the postmodern information technology revolution of the 80s and onward - it (would have) largely missed that boat, I'm sure.
Portal Star wrote:The only time when there was almost a direct conflict between Russian and the US was the cuban missile crisis. We were competing, but not fighting - this is why it was called the cold war.
Well, there was enough war by proxy, from Korea to Angola ...
Portal Star wrote:not for every worker, but there were forced labor camps - which were basically jail. I'd call that a forceful incentive to work.
Again, are you talking, what? the 20s, the 30s, the 60s or the 80s? There are
huge differences there. Under Stalin and quite a while past that, massive numbers of millions of Russians suffered in the labour camps. By the sixties, the Gulag had been all but dissolved. Not to say that dissent didnt still get you in prison - nor that you wouldnt get in prison for misdemeanours one would laugh at here - but that's something else from some massive system of labour camps.
Look, basically, if you've "had your formal training", you should be able to distinguish between, say, Stalinism and Brezhnevism. Neither was pretty, but you seem to be mixing up a few things at the moment.
